The Cleaner

by Brett Battles

  Quinn eased out from behind the couch into the living room. As he approached the recliner his ears picked up the sound of breathing – slight, but definitely real.

  He raised his gun.

  'Stand up,' Quinn said.

  Gibson leaned around the side of the chair and fired. The bullet went wide, but only by inches. Quinn pulled the trigger on the Glock. A roar filled the room, followed almost instantly by the smell of expended gunpowder. The shot pierced the chair nearly dead-center.

  'You son of a bitch,' Gibson hissed, pain lacing his voice.

  'Enough?' Quinn asked. 'Throw down the gun and come out slowly.'

  Gibson stood up slowly, his left arm dangling uselessly at his side.

  'Now put the gun down,' Quinn said.

  For a second he thought Gibson was going to comply. Suddenly the assassin pushed back from the chair, the gun in his right hand moving quickly upward, pointing toward Quinn.

  But Quinn was ready. He pulled his trigger first.

  By the time Gibson slammed against the window, he was already dead. The bulletproof glass reverberated with the weight of the failed assassin's body, but didn't break.

  Quinn ran back into the kitchen. The chair still lay on top of Nate's body. Quinn quickly pushed it off and put a hand on his apprentice's neck. He could feel a pulse, steady and strong. Quinn could also now see Nate's chest expand and contract. A quick visual check revealed no entry or exit wounds along his back, and no pool of blood gathering on the floor beneath him.

  Quinn leaned down to Nate's left ear. 'Nate,' he

  said. There was no response. 'Nate. Wake up.' A low moan escaped from Nate's mouth. A

  moment later his eyelids fluttered. 'Take it easy,' Quinn said. 'Are you hit?' Both eyes opened slowly. 'Quinn?' he said, his

  mouth pressed against the floor, slurring his speech. 'Are you hit?' Quinn repeated. 'I don't think so.' 'Maybe you should check.' Nate closed his eyes again. With effort, he rolled

  over onto his back. 'Fuck,' he called out, wincing. 'What?' Quinn asked. Nate rubbed the side of his face. 'He hit me in

  the jaw.' There was a red patch on the side of Nate's face, but otherwise he appeared unmarked. Quinn stood up. 'You might want to put some ice on that.'

  Quinn walked back into the living room. The phone was still on the couch where he'd dropped it. He picked it up and was about to dial for help when he heard a muffled voice on the other end.

  'Quinn?' It was Peter. 'You're still there?' 'What's going on?' 'Gibson got loose.' 'And?' 'He's dead.' Peter didn't answer right away. 'It would have

  been better if you'd taken Gibson alive.'

  'Well, shucks. I wish you'd told me that sooner. Or maybe I should have told him to wait a moment while I checked with you.'

  'Give me the details,' Peter said.

  Quinn took a breath, then filled him in.

  'You need help with removal?' Peter asked.

  'I'll take care of it.' Quinn paused. 'Are you going to tell me what's going on now?'

  The line went quiet for a moment, then, 'We're not sure.'

  'You realize I'm not coming to D.C., don't you?'

  'It's not a good idea now, anyway. I think you should probably just get lost.'

  'Is that an official directive?'

  'Let's just call it officially unofficial,' Peter said. 'Make yourself scarce. I don't care where. In fact, I don't want to know.' 'The son of a bitch knew where I lived,' Quinn said, more to himself than to Peter.

  'More reason to get out of there. Whoever's behind this might try for you again. And if you stay where they can find you, they might not miss next time. But it's your choice.'

  'My choice,' Quinn said. 'Right.' He hung up the phone.

  Quinn stared for several moments out the back window into the Los Angeles night. Peter was right. If it indeed was a disruption, then disappearing was the only option.

  'Nate,' Quinn called toward the kitchen. Nate, legs unsteady, weaved into the room, falling more than sitting onto the couch. 'What?' 'I hope you haven't unpacked.'

  Chapter 8

  Quinn and Nate entered the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX just before 10 a.m. As they made their way through the Saturday morning crowds, Quinn had to constantly fight an urge to look over his shoulder. He had little doubt there was someone somewhere at the airport looking for them. Or if not both of them, at least him. He knew he had to maintain the delicate balance between being aware of his surroundings and trying not to draw any attention to himself. Frontline op agents could do this in their sleep, but Quinn – especially since he had Nate with him – had to work at it.

  Having Nate stay in L.A. had been an option, but not a good one. Whoever wanted Quinn dead had to know he had an apprentice. So leaving Nate behind would have meant setting him up as a target. If Nate had a bit more experience, maybe they could have tried splitting up. But he was only four months in on an apprenticeship that would last anywhere from three to four years. Four months was nothing. Nate wasn't even close to being prepared to handle this kind of situation. Unlike Quinn, he had come into the business straight out of college, a recommendation of a friend. If Quinn left him, he might as well just tie Nate to a chair in the middle of his living room and put a big welcome mat at his feet. The end result would be the same.

  There had been no choice. Nate had to go with him until things calmed down.

  They paused in front of a departure monitor. Quinn pretended to check the display, just another traveler on a holiday. Casually, he looked at his watch, then glanced around as if he were waiting for someone. His gaze never stopped on anyone in particular, and after a couple of sweeps, he decided they were still alone.

  'So?' Nate asked.

  'What?' Quinn said.

  Nate nodded at the departure monitors. 'Which flight are we taking?'

  'Give me your passport.'

  Nate pulled a blue-covered booklet from his pocket and handed it over. It was one of twenty they carried between them, all fake. Each was top quality, made by a guy Quinn knew who worked out of a shop on the Venice Beach boardwalk.

  Dozens of international airlines were set up in Bradley Terminal. Usually they would have had the choice of the whole world. But this wasn't a usual day, and until Quinn heard otherwise, he had to assume most of the world wasn't safe. He needed to select a destination no one would expect them to go to.

  Europe was out. As was anywhere in the States or Canada. Latin America was an option, but not a great one. Too many spooks, too many chances someone might spot him. Russia, Australia, China, Japan – all lousy choices. There really was only one answer. He looked around until he spotted what he was looking for.

  'Okay. Let's go,' he said. 'Not even a hint?' Nate asked. Quinn ignored the question as he headed off

  through the crowd. It took them less than two minutes to reach the business- and first-class passenger line for Thai Airways.

  'All right,' Nate said, smiling. 'Not one more word until we're on the plane,

  understand?' 'Yeah. Sure. Not a word.' When their turn came, Quinn gave Nate a

  warning look before approaching the counter. 'How can I help you?' the ticket agent said. She was an Asian woman about thirty years old. 'I'm wondering if there are any seats left on the

  12:05 flight to Bangkok?' 'No business class, sir,' she said. 'But there are

  still a couple available in first class.' 'Perfect,' he said with a smile. 'Two, please.' 'The seats are not together. Is that all right?' she

  asked. 'No problem,' Quinn said. 'May I have your passports?' Quinn handed her the two passports, then smiled

  again. She looked at them, then punched several keys on the keyboard of her computer terminal. 'How would you like to pay, Mr. Hayden?'

  Quinn held passports in many names. Louis Hayden was the one he'd chosen for this trip, it having the benefit of being an identity he'd never used previously. Nate was traveling under the name Raymond James. 'Credit card,' he said, removing from his walle
t one of the several he had with the Hayden alias on it.

  After he paid, the woman busied herself at her computer arranging their tickets. Quinn casually scanned the terminal again. It didn't take him long to identify two suspicious types near the front entrance. They were big guys, both dressed in dark gray business suits. They seemed to be paying particularly close attention to the people coming into the building. Surprisingly, Nate seemed to have noticed them, too. He looked at Quinn, trying but failing to hide his concern. Quinn shrugged and gave him a quick smile.

  'Here you are,' the agent said. She set the tickets and passports on the top of the counter. 'Any luggage?'

  Quinn shook his head. 'Just our carry-ons.' She smiled in approval, no doubt guessing they were seasoned travelers. 'Enjoy your flight.' 'Thank you,' he said. 'We will.'

  Quinn eased his chair back, then glanced out the window at the Pacific Ocean, thirty thousand feet below. It was the first time in nearly twelve hours he wasn't doing anything. Physically, he was exhausted.

  Nate was across the cabin, three rows back. Quinn had offered him a sleeping pill before they boarded, and apparently it had worked quickly. Nate's head lolled to the side, his eyes closed.

  Quinn let his mind drift, trying not to think of anything at all. He needed to unwind and relax. More than anything, he knew he needed to sleep. But his mind kept replaying the events of the last twelve hours: Gibson on his porch, Peter on the phone, Nate on the floor, and

  A flight attendant touched him on the shoulder. 'Pad Thai or chicken curry with rice?' she asked.

  Quinn glanced at his watch and was surprised to find several hours had already passed. Sometime during his mental storm he must have actually dozed off. 'Pad Thai,' he said.

  'And to drink?'

  'Just water.'

  As he ate his food he forced himself to concentrate on trying to figure out who Gibson might have been working for, and why they had targeted Quinn.

  He had searched Gibson's body thoroughly before turning it over to the local disposal guy. He hadn't expected to discover anything useful, and he'd been right. Other than the tools of the trade in his bag, the only thing Gibson had on him was three hundred dollars in cash.

  It was a pretty fair guess that whoever had hired him had deep pockets, enough to fund a small-scale, one-night war on the Office. How many agents had they gone after? Five? Six? A dozen? More? Whatever the number, from the sound of things, Quinn getting the upper hand on Gibson appeared to be the exception. Others, apparently, hadn't been so lucky.

  A disruption, Quinn thought.

  That someone had attempted to pull one off was hard to believe. Yet it looked like it had happened. And, more surprisingly, it seemed to have been successful.

  It was mind-blowing, really. A disruption almost never worked. The idea behind it was to cause as much chaos as possible within a particular agency. There were many reasons why: to cover up something that was happening, to cover up something that was going to happen, to foul up an ongoing operation, to get rid of an annoying competitor, or simply to take down somebody else's organization entirely for no particular reason at all. You heard about them when you first started out in the business. About the theory. About the attempts to pull them off in the past, all but a very few unsuccessful. And finally you heard about how no one tried them anymore. History was against success.

  Apparently, someone hadn't been paying attention when that lesson had been taught.

  Once his tray had been removed, Quinn leaned his chair back as far as it would go. His thoughts were taking him nowhere, and his lack of sleep wasn't helping. He closed his eyes, hoping his mind would settle down and allow him the rest he needed. But his thoughts took one final turn back to the core question.

  Why him? He wasn't a member of the Office. He was only a freelancer. He should have been exempt, right?

  As sleep began to take hold of him, an answer started drifting toward the surface. Nothing fully formed. More of a hunch, really.

  Taggert.

  Somewhere between Los Angeles, a brief stop in Osaka, and landing in Bangkok, they lost Sunday. Travel to Asia from the States was always painful that way, the international date line exacting its toll for daring to travel nearly halfway around the world.

  Quinn and Nate were only in Thailand a few hours before they caught a connecting flight out of the country. Nate seemed both disappointed and confused when Quinn said their trip wasn't over. But to his credit, he kept his questions to himself. The second flight was a short trip, but it took them a million miles from everywhere else.

  After the plane landed and began taxiing to the terminal, a flight attendant's voice came over the public address system. 'Thai Airways would like to welcome you to Ho Chi Minh City.'

  It was midmorning in Vietnam, and the heat was rippling off the tarmac. There were a few clouds in the distance, but otherwise the sky was clear. Quinn looked around the interior of the cabin. Several people were already pulling out bags and purses from under the seats where they'd been stowed. Quinn was content to sit quietly and wait.

  Before he left home, he'd cleaned out his safe, taking everything except his gun. In addition to his laptop computer, he had a dozen passports: American, Canadian, Swiss, Finnish, German, Russian – each in a different name. Plus corresponding sets of credit cards, ten thousand U.S.

  dollars in cash, a two-gigabyte flash memory stick on which was stored hundreds of contacts and other information, and a notebook filled with pages and pages of visas for various countries around the world. All the sensitive material was stored in a false hard-plastic lining in his suitcase. If he was ever asked to start up his laptop at a security checkpoint, the desktop that would appear would look like that of a typical businessman. Charts and graphics and spreadsheets, all very serious-looking but none important enough to draw undue attention.

  He'd inserted Vietnamese visas into both his and Nate's passports in the lavatory of their previous flight just before landing in Bangkok. He'd used a palm-sized stamping kit to apply the appropriate dates, then studied his forgeries to make sure everything looked correct.

  The ploy had worked in Bangkok, where they had to show a valid Vietnamese visa in order to pick up their tickets. But that had just been a Thai Airways employee. Now that they were in Ho Chi Minh City, they had to deal with the Vietnamese themselves.

  Quinn put his passport in his shirt pocket and pulled his bag out of the storage bin above his seat. With Nate right behind him, he joined the line of passengers making their way off the plane.

  'You've gotta be kidding me,' Nate said just loud enough for Quinn to hear as they reached the exit.

  There was no covered ramp on the other side of the door leading into the terminal. Instead, passengers disembarked the old-fashioned way, via a wheel-up staircase.

  Quinn gave his apprentice a quick, hard look.

  'Sorry,' Nate said.

  Without another word, they made their way down the ramp, then proceeded to walk across the tarmac to customs. Quinn made sure they inserted themselves into the middle of the pack of departing passengers.

  'They won't ask,' Quinn said, 'but if they do, we're here on business. Researching investment opportunities. I'll do the talking, though. You just look serious. Businesslike.'

  The terminal building reminded Quinn of a large warehouse. It was old and dingy, cavernous, with mold growing on the walls. There was none of the polish or amenities of Western airports.

  Inside, the first thing they came to was passport control. Though there were several stations set up, only two were open, and the lines were long. To be safe, Quinn chose the one with the more bored-looking official. As they neared, he slipped twenty

  U.S. dollars, a tidy sum in Vietnam, into his passport next to his visa.

  He looked over his shoulder at Nate. 'We can only go up one at a time,' he said. 'Try not to say anything. Not even hello. If there's a problem, just motion for me to come back and I'll take care of it.'

  'Okay,' Nat
e said, his voice less confident than Quinn would have liked.

  The woman ahead of them finished, and Quinn walked up to the desk. He placed his passport on the counter and held the cover down until the official took it from him. The man opened the passport, glanced up at Quinn, then quickly slipped the twenty into his own pocket. Grabbing a rubber stamp, he pushed it into an inkpad and stamped one of the pages in Quinn's passport. When he finished, he put the booklet back on the counter without a word. Quinn nodded politely as he retrieved it, then moved on.

  He stopped twenty feet away, pretending to search for something in one of his pockets. He looked back as Nate handed his passport to the official. The man seemed to be taking a lot more time than he had with Quinn.

  Nate glanced at his mentor, a trace of nervousness in his eyes. But a moment later, the official stamped the booklet and put it back on the counter.

  Next was customs, but that was even easier. Nate went first, taking less than a minute to get his bag checked. Quinn's turn went just as quickly.

  The humidity of the Vietnamese morning, even in January, was stifling. Sweat had begun to form on Quinn's brow the moment he stepped off the plane, and now his shirt was plastered to his back.

  Just outside the terminal's front exit was a waist-high fence that ran parallel to the plate-glass windows of the building, creating a walkway about ten feet wide. Not your typical airport exit, but it was easy to see why it was necessary. On the other side of the fence were hundreds and hundreds of people, standing five and six deep. They were pushing and shoving each other, trying to get closer to the front. They shouted as each new passenger exited the terminal, calling out to them with offers of sodas and water and fruit and taxi rides.

  At the end of the fence, the path opened onto a parking lot. There were still many people about, but not nearly as many as lined the gauntlet Quinn and Nate had just come down. A young boy approached them – dark hair, big smile, clothes clean but worn.

  'Bag,' the boy said in heavily accented English. He pointed to Quinn's suitcase. 'I help.'